Spreading a passion for science: outreach
FLEET shares the responsibility to increase the participation of students in science, and to increase the number of girls and women participating in physics, chemistry and engineering.
FLEET focuses significant efforts on science outreach, with the aim of:
- Increasing the participation of students in science and physics
- Increasing understanding of, and passion for, science in the general public
- Improving the outreach skills of FLEET members
- Supporting the public discussion of FLEET-specific research.
2020: a challenging year for outreach!
In 2019, after a remarkable achievement in reaching over 10,000 students, FLEET voluntarily raised its outreach target from 200 students to 2000 students, 50 teachers to 75 teachers and 2000 public members to 5000 public members.
And then Covid happened …
However, despite the unique challenges that Covid imposed on face-to-face outreach, cancelling public events and banning in-class or in-lab visits, FLEET is extremely proud of our achievements in science outreach in 2020.
Almost to our own surprise, we met our voluntarily-increased schools outreach target, reaching 1665 students (83% of target) and 263 teachers (351%).
We almost met our extremely ambitious target of 20 hours spent by every FLEET member on outreach activities, after offering members a comprehensive suite of ‘virtual’ outreach activities to choose from.
We reached over 2200 members of the public (44% of target), despite the lack of public events from March onwards.
In, addition, FLEET members:
- Created their own home-science experiments in lockdown
- Crafted a DIY lightboard for science outreach videos
- Quickly adapted to online delivery of the John Monash Science School (JMSS) Year 10 FLEET science unit
- Designed a new system for virtual in-class outreach
- Fine-tuned skills for science outreach and communication, including Blender animation, Wikipedia editing, perfecting the science pitch
- Pitched to 16 new industry contacts as part of Ascend program
- Arranged virtual lab tours for students to ‘visit’ Swinburne, UNSW and Monash University.
Read our Case Study
Read our Case Study
While ‘traditional’ outreach activities this year were not really possible, members really rose to the challenge in identifying new ways in which we could reach the broader community. I was so impressed and inspired by what folks came up with!
Dr Julie Karel, Chair, FLEET Outreach Committee
Did you know...
Up to 75% of future jobs will require skills in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Yet school participation in science is in decline
Virtual lab tours
In the absence of in-house lab tours to introduce school students to working labs and researchers, in 2020 FLEET developed a series of ‘virtual lab tours’, of varying levels of interactivity:
- Show-and-tell lab tour via webcam for John Monash Science School (JMSS) students of FLEET laboratories at UNSW in Sydney (materials science), and Swinburne in Hawthorn (cold-atom optics)
- UNSW experimental lab introductions for Open Day
- Monash University Materials Science and Engineering and School of Physics and Astronomy lab videos for Open Day
- Three-dimensional ‘walk through’ of the New Horizons lab, Monash
- Virtual in-school outreach featuring FLEET members in the lab dialling in to guide hands-on experiments in class.
Click the photo above for a virtual tour of our research laboratories.
It is extremely helpful to have a dedicated outreach person who arranges a wide range of opportunities for FLEET members to participate, and also provides support: resources, coaching, advice, etc. Ie, not just leaving members to 'fend for themselves'.
FLEET member survey